In Edgar Lee Masters’ “Nicholas Bindle” from Spoon River Anthology, the speaker vents his outrage at the town’s citizenry for continuing to harass him for charitable offerings while his financial situation was not strong. He also demonstrates his disgust that Deacon Rhodes was acquitted of bank fraud.
This poem’s speaker begins with a question for his fellow citizens who, he feels, should be ashamed for their role in urging him to donate. His opening question reveals his own beliefs about the situation and therefore is rhetorical in nature. Of course, he wants them to feel shame as he is berating them.
The speaker concludes his tirade also with a question that again reveals his own disgust at how unfairly he thinks he was treated. Nicholas Bindle condenses his tirade into an eleven-line, innovative American sonnet, which bellows his deep displeasure from the grave.
First Movement: “Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens”
The speaker, Nicholas Bindle, chides his “fellow citizens” for begging him to give to charity. He asks them if they were “not ashamed” when they became aware that his estate was so meager. After his death, his estate was “probated” in the courts, and the size of his holdings would have been exposed.
Of course, Nicholas knows that those citizens understand “how small a fortune [he] left” behind, and he wants to vent his anger and frustration over the issue.
Second Movement: “You who hounded me in life”
Nicholas continues his rant, accusing the citizens of “hound[ing]” him to “give, give, give.” They constantly implored him to donate “to the churches, to the poor, / To the village!”
Indignantly, he claims that he had “already give[n] much,” yet they continued to badger him for more. Nicholas wants to make sure his fellow citizens understand the deep frustration their pleading for charitable offerings has engendered in him.
Third Movement: “And think you not I did not know”
Finally, Nicholas does reveal that he actually did provide some bounty: he gave the church a pipe-organ. But instead of taking any comfort in his giving, he is outraged because “Deacon Rhodes” had been in attendance when the pipe-organ first “played it christening songs.”
In an earlier poem, the reader learned about Deacon Rhodes, who won his acquittal through some legal chicanery. Although Nicholas does not allude to those specific circumstances, because he probably does not know the details, he is obsessed because Rhodes’ guilt went unpunished.
Nicholas along with other citizens would have experienced financial hardship and even ruin because of old Thomas Rhodes breaking the bank. Nicholas expresses his outrage as he compares his own situation to those whom he believes bear guilt, while he is an innocent man hounded by the busy-body citizens of Spoon River.
Sources
- Edgar Lee Masters, "Nicholas Bindle," Spoon River Anthology, bartleby.com
- Linda Sue Grimes, “Edgar Lee Masters ‘Jack McGuire’,” Suite101.com
Linda Sue Grimes - As a writer, researcher, and SRF devotee, Linda Sue Grimes has studied poetry and practiced Kriya Yoga for over thirty years..
